Starting Area

I picked this one up during a Steam sale a while back and just started a game for the first time.

The skills and character progression system seem very interesting, but I was a bit confused about the starting area.

I understand I received some sort of invitation and I'm supposed to meet someone in the village. However, I wanted to ignore all of that and either attack some of the NPCs in the town or wander off on my own to find some enemies.

Is this not possible? The game seems to be relatively open world, but so far I cannot find anyone that I can attack.

This is not an hack & slay game. Please keep that in mind. If you play the game like that, you will have not much fun.

You can't attack NPCs. It's as simple as that.

And : You *need* to talk to every NPC.

Of course you can find wild animals in the area, but remember : This is not an hack & slash game ! Killing is not the goal of this game !

It is rather story-driven. Hence the required talk to NPCS.

But - you'll get occations for fighting more than enough - much much later in the game.

— “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

So, to make sure I understand correctly, there are no enemies at all that you can fight during the first part of the game?

I have never played any games of the "hack and slash" genre, such as Diablo, Torchlight, etc.

Drakensang seems like a relatively open world game and I wanted to do dive into the world and do some exploration; however, it feels like I'm being railroaded into some quests my character may not be interested in completing.

In the first village there are wild enemies in the woods, yes, but that's it. No NPCs can be slain, this just isn't the game for it.

You will be only able to slay wild enemies, undeads, and Orcs and Goblins of some sort (remember that they will look differently from other fantsy settings, namely D&D).

But of that, there'll be enough.

The world is only partially open. The very first town is indeed mainly railroading. Imagine it as a tutorial area (which it infact is, sort of).
You get access to other areas only by quests (and by travelling), but within these new areas, everything is more or less open. Enemies respawn only in limited areas, though.

And please keep in mind (this is important) : You cannot go back to some of the earlier areas. (Except with a tool/mod someone once presented in the official Drakensang forums). Like the very first village, for example.

— “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

There are several wolves and some bandits in the first area. You can wander into a cave and fight other creatures. However, there are no fights in the town environs. Cross the bridge, and enter the wooded area. If you talk to the townspeople first, you'll save yourself some backtracking.

Combat / exploration and story / dialogs are pretty clearly separated, aside from a few intrigues here and there. If there is combat, it's often a lot.

I recommend you find out how to increase the walking speed. It will save you a couple of hours. The tool linked to in the forum does it, AFAIR. It can be done by hand too. You only need to change a few values in a MySQL DB with the help of a suitable editor.

The first area is an overlong tutorial. Things open when you reach the city. And the character system gets wider and wider for the next 70 hours. Understanding everything immediately is not necessary. You can right-click on most stats to get more explanations.

If you purchased The River of Time too, you should play that one instead.